Hello,
I just installed Sabayon 13.04 with Gnome on my Acer laptop. The broadcom wlan and ethernet are not working (and did not during installation). Here is my lspci: https://pastebin.sabayon.org/pastie/12609 . The wireless/bluetooth on this laptop are usually toggled by pressing Fn+F3, which causes complete system freeze in Sabayon (in other Linux distros, it just behaves erratically, but useless as well). I also tried a usb wlan dongle, which also appears deactivated. Switching wireless ON in Gnome network settings has no effect (the GUI switch remains in OFF position), and the hardware keycombo causes system freeze. Under Debian-based distro, I used to unblock wlan with rfkill, but this seems not present here?

Last edited by bennypr0fane on Sun May 12, 2013 14:49, edited 1 time in total.

I wonder why the rtlwifi and rtl8192cu modules are loaded if you have a Broadcom BCM43225 wireless controller. If you installed SL with a USB WiFi adapter plugged in, please remove it and reinstall. If you still cannot access a wireless network, try blacklisting the modules brcmsmac, b43, ssb and bcma, and whitelist the wl module, then reboot. The way to do that, if you are not familiar with blacklisting/whitelisting, is to make sure the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf includes the following in its contents (obviously don't have "wl" in one place and "# wl" in another place, etc.):

Fitzcarraldo wrote:I wonder why the rtlwifi and rtl8192cu modules are loaded if you have a Broadcom BCM43225 wireless controller. If you installed SL with a USB WiFi adapter plugged in, please remove it and reinstall. If you still cannot access a wireless network, try blacklisting the modules brcmsmac, b43, ssb and bcma, and whitelist the wl module, then reboot. The way to do that, if you are not familiar with blacklisting/whitelisting, is to make sure the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf includes the following in its contents (obviously don't have "wl" in one place and "# wl" in another place, etc.):

I did not reinstall, but I uncommented the opensource wifi drivers in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf so it looks like you posted.
Ryuno-Ki said on IRC these commented last two lines are for documentation, as an explanantion why I blacklisted the open-source drivers in case I look at the file later adn don't remember why I edited it. That bit wasn't quite obvious to me.

In /etc/conf.d/modules, I whitelisted the wl driver by only inserting the last line, like this:

# You can define a list modules for a specific kernel version,
# a released kernel version, a main kernel version or just a list.
# The most specific versioned variable will take precedence.
#modules_2_6_23_gentoo_r5="ieee1394 ohci1394"
#modules_2_6_23="tun ieee1394"
#modules_2_6="tun"
#modules_2="ipv6"
#modules="ohci1394"
# You can give modules a different name when they load - the new name
# will also be used to pick arguments below.
#modules="dummy:dummy1"
# Give the modules some arguments if needed, per version if necessary.
# Again, the most specific versioned variable will take precedence.
#module_ieee1394_args="debug"
#module_ieee1394_args_2_6_23_gentoo_r5="debug2"
#module_ieee1394_args_2_6_23="debug3"
#module_ieee1394_args_2_6="debug4"
#module_ieee1394_args_2="debug5"
# You should consult your kernel documentation and configuration
# for a list of modules and their options.
#
modules="wl"

It's working now, thanks a lot! My Wifi is now available from the start, or if it isn't, I can use the Fn+F3 key combo to activate it (not freezing the system anymore).

Now for the ethernet. This hasn't been causing trouble before in other GNU/Linuxes. Before the wifi worked, I went online by tethering my phone via usb. This is seen by my system as a wired connection. Any other info you need me to post for diagnose?

Last edited by bennypr0fane on Sat May 11, 2013 18:48, edited 1 time in total.

bennypr0fane wrote:Now for the ethernet. This hasn't been causing trouble before in other GNU/Linuxes. Before the wifi worked, I went online by tethering my phone via usb. This is seen by my system as a wired connection. Any other info you need me to post for diagnose?

The term 'whitelisting' means 'make sure the module is not declared in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf (or, if it is declared in that file, make sure that it is commented out)'. Adding a module to the modules list in /etc/conf.d/modules tells the OS to load that module at startup. Actually, I'm not sure if an unwanted entry in blacklist.conf overrides an entry in /etc/conf.d/modules, as I always do both. I'll have to check some time out of interest. I didn't tell the OP to add the closed-source broadcom-sta (wl) module to /etc/conf.d/modules because I wanted to see if, when he blacklisted the open-source Broadcom modules and whitelisted the broadcom-sta module, whether it would be loaded automatically without needing an entry in /etc/conf.d/modules (the other modules didn't need an entry there). Anyway, even if it would have done, it does no harm to have the entry in /etc/conf.d/modules.

According to your output from the lspci command, your machine uses the Broadcom BCM57760 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe controller. I believe that requires the Tigon3 (tg3) module. CONFIG_TIGON3=m in the SL kernel config (see GitHub link at top of this page) and your output from the lsmod command shows that the tg3 module is loaded. However, according to a post in the Arch Linux Forums ([SOLVED] BCM57760 don't work with Arch for me), the broadcom module needs to be loaded before the tg3 module for it to work properly. Therefore, try the following as root user in a Terminal window: